The Other Way Around
by Chiiyo86
Summary: AU. The more you try to run from the past, the more it catches up with you.


A/N: _Written as a belated Christmas present for the lovely smilla02, who wanted an AU in which John dies and Mary lives. Beta'ed by the no less lovely wave obscura._

Disclaimer: _I don't own anything Supernatural related._

---

_Thump_ is the noise the empty cup makes when it hits the bottom of the sink. Mary winces. A headache is blooming, and she rubs her temples tiredly, knowing that what she needs the most is sleep, full night sleep and a lot less coffee. But it's hard to combine sleep with being a single mom, being a teacher, and having a secret life as a hunter. _What I need is some super powers. Mary Winchester during the day, and Super Hunter at night. _She snorts at the ludicrousness of her thoughts.

"Right," she says out loud.

"Talking to yourself, Mom? Isn't it the first sign of insanity?"

She spins round, knowing who the voice belongs to but instincts kicking anyway because she didn't hear anyone come in. Sloppy, she thinks, frustrated with herself.

"Hi, baby," she greets her younger son. He walks to the fridge, hair tousled with sleep and rubbing his eyes. "Making fun of your old mother?"

Sam chuckles lightly. He gathers milk, orange juice and a box of cereal, goes to the kitchen table and starts fixing himself breakfast.

"You're not old, Mom. Insane maybe, but not old."

"Why, thank you."

She glances at the clock. It's 9 am and Saturday, so they won't see Dean for a while. She sits at the table in front of Sam, who stops pouring milk into the bowl of cereal and looks up questioningly.

"You want breakfast?" he asks.

"No, thanks, I already had coffee."

"Coffee is not breakfast," he counters wisely.

She laughs and ruffles his hair, because he's still young enough to let her do that with minimum whining.

"Aw, Mom," he protests mildly, but doesn't try to move away from her hand. "You know I'm right," he adds.

"Yeah, I know." He casts her a pointed look. "I know! I'm just not really hungry right now. Now would you quit worrying about me! I'm the Mom, not you."

"Yes, Mom." He crunches on his cereals in silence for a minute. "So. Did you go hunting last night?"

The question asks some efforts from him, Mary can see it. Contrary to his brother, Sam doesn't like to talk about hunting; it makes him uncomfortable. What he really wants to know is if she's alright.

"I did," she answers. "Straightforward salt'n'burn. Nothing to write home about."

"Good."

She sees him relax, and she feels instantaneously guilty. She never wanted her kids to know anything about hunting. Hell, she never told John about it, though she regrets it deeply, now. She had ten years of happiness, full of John and the birth of her two beautiful sons, and the hope that everything that bumps into the night belonged to her past. What a fool she'd been. She couldn't hide from the knowledge that the Yellow-Eyed demon would come back eventually, but she'd tried, thinking that he would come back for _her_ and that at least she would have had ten years with John and she wasn't afraid of dying anyway, was she? She should have remembered the inherent sadism of demons – he gave her John back, so he just had to come and take him away, for good this time. And do something to Sammy; though she hadn't figured exactly what yet.

That's why she had to start hunting again. She didn't leave Lawrence, had her house rebuilt because it was her home, and she had a feeling the demon could find them anywhere so there was no point in running. She taught the boys how to defend themselves, hand-to-hand fighting and shooting and the basics about salt and iron, but she never lets them hunt. No matter how much Dean begged.

Speak of the devil… Her oldest son storms into the kitchen, fully dressed and with his jacket on.

"Hey, Mom. Hey, Sammy."

He plunges his hand in Sammy's cereal box, pops some cereal into his mouth.

"Gotta meet with Jason, I'll be back for lunch," he says in a rush, and is gone before Mary can do more than open her mouth. She closes it and sighs. She doesn't know how to handle that boy anymore.

"Does your brother have a girlfriend?" she asks, aiming for casual. Her son frowns at her.

"What?" she says, feeling a little defensive. "I'm curious. He has seemed awfully busy lately."

Sam shrugs, looking down at his bowl.

"It depends on what you mean by girlfriend. He makes out a lot in closets with Amanda Jenkins. Don't know if it counts as having a girlfriend. But he doesn't really tell me anything, so."

She raises eyebrows at the bitterness in Sam's tone.

"Did something happen, sweetie? You have a fight with your brother?"

"To have a fight we would have to actually _talk. _But Dean just doesn't have time for me anymore. All he does is hang around with his friends and lock himself in closets with girls. I guess I'm too boring for him."

His hazel eyes are bright, filled with tears, she thinks, but he lowers his head and hides himself behind his bangs. It hurts her, makes her want to hold him in his arms and tell him everything will be okay. The boys have always been close, and even when she didn't know how to talk to Dean and her son was shutting her down more and more until she hadn't the slightest idea of what he was thinking, she knew he wasn't drifting too far away from her because there still was this connection to Sam.

"Oh, Sam. Honey, you know your brother loves you very much."

"You think?"

"I do. He loves you, but he's sixteen and…"

"Are we going to talk about what it's like to be a teenager? Because I really don't feel like it."

"Well, we're going to have to talk about it eventually…" He purses his lips in disgust. "… but not right now. My point is, he's four years older than you are, and he's at an age when he's going to be more willing to hang around with people outside of family, and… older."

"You mean that he doesn't like me anymore because I'm younger? But I'll always be younger than him!"

"No, no, no," she says quickly, eyes widened. _Great job at comforting the kid, Mary._ "That's not what I mean! Just that for now, Dean prefers to be with people of his age. He's going through… a phase. But you'll grow up too, and eventually, if you work at it, you'll have him back. And you'll never stop being brothers."

Sam is nibbling at his lower lip and looking at her with big eyes full of trust that make her heart clench. When was the last time Dean looked at her like that? Did it ever happen after the fire? She often tells herself that Dean is a teenager and it's okay if he doesn't confide in her like Sam does, it's normal. But the truth is that even at Sam's age Dean was never this open.

"You promise?" Sam asks, bringing her back to the present.

"That's between you and your brother." She smiles. "But I feel pretty confident."

He nods, drinks the milk at the bottom of his bowl and his face is hidden from her for a few seconds.

"All better, now?" Mary inquires once the bowl is back on the table and she can see her boy's face again.

"Yeah." He half-smiles sheepishly. "Sorry I'm such a baby, Mom."

Her baby_, _she thinks fondly, but puts on a stern expression.

"Yeah, next time I want you to suck it up, young man." He snorts, not taking her seriously; she grins mischievously.

---

Mary limps in the bathroom and sits on the edge of the bathtub, mindful of her aching hip. She looks down on herself, on the blood all over her shirt and lets out a sigh. She can probably throw it away already, because there's no way she's going to get it clean.

The phone rings; she gets up stiffly, her movements slow and painful. The insistent trill is making her head throb, and she grumbles irritably:

"I'm coming, damn it."

"About time," a gruff voice groans when she picks up.

"Fuck you, Singer," she retorts sharply. "My hip is fucking killing me, so don't start."

"If you're still bitching, it can't be too serious," he scoffs, but she hears the slightly questioning tone.

She bits down a smile. She doesn't know what she'd do if she hadn't found Bobby Singer. Sometimes she wonders what her dad was thinking when he kept her so completely apart from the hunting community. Did he assume he was going to live forever? Or maybe he hoped that she'd made of John her hunting partner; she has to laugh at that idea, imagining her sweet, gentle John as a hunter.

"I'm okay, Bobby. The sucker was a pretty low-level demon, didn't give me any trouble."

"But?"

"But before I completed the exorcism the thing said something… Something about Sam." She hesitates.

"Spit it out, girl!"

"It said there was some kind of…. 'chosen children.' That Sam was one of them."

"Chosen for what?"

"The thing's last words were that if Sam played it well, he would have some kind of extraordinary destiny… And then…" She swallows, and her voice sounds small and frightened to her own ears: "'_Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six_.'"

"Revelation, 13.18," he whispers. "Are we talking about the goddamn Apocalypse?"

"I don't know." Her voice catches in her throat. There's a noise behind her and she jumps, whirls around, ready to fight. "_Mary?_" she hears Bobby's muffled voice coming from the phone, but ignores him because Dean is standing in the doorway and looking at her with huge green eyes shining in the half-lit room.

"Dean?"

"Mom?" He sounds so young. _Looks _so young. He has a split lip, a bruise on his left cheek, and she wants to reach out and wipe the drying blood on his chin.

"I'll call you back, Bobby," she says to the phone before hanging up. "Where did you come from, Dean?"

"Outside. What were you talking about?"

"Don't change the subject. Where were you?"

"_You _don't change the subject! You were talking about Sammy, right? You heard something about him, about what happened to him that night."

Her heart pounds hard against her ribs. She always wondered, but never dared to ask what exactly her oldest son saw that night. She remembers her blond four-year old, solemn and silent, who she never took to a psychologist because she was too afraid of the crazy things he might say. What kind of horrible mother is she?

"What do you know about that night?" she says slowly, while her mind is screaming – _What did I do? What did I do to my little boy?_

"I saw a man, he had yellow eyes. He told me 'sshh' so I went back to my room. I knew he was something _bad, _you know, can't explain how but I could just feel it. Then I heard you scream and I came running. I saw Dad on the ceiling. And then there was fire everywhere and you put Sammy in my arms and told me to run."

She feels a sob bubble in her throat and brings her hand to her mouth to keep it in. She can't let him see her cry, doesn't have the right to burden him like this.

"So now," Dean goes on, eerily calm. "Can you tell me what you learned about Sam?"

She forces a breath in.

"Not much. The demon talked about 'chosen children,' said that Sam was one of them, and quoted the Book of Revelations. That's all."

He eyes her suspiciously, like he isn't sure she's telling the whole truth, and she can't deny that it stings.

"Okay," he finally says, and turns his back to her, ready to leave.

"Wait!" she calls, and he stops but doesn't turn. "Where were you? I'm asking you to be honest with me."

"I was out hunting."

"What…?"

"Mom," he cuts her. "Can we talk about it later?"

She doesn't recognize the tone of his voice and it scares her, so she keeps silent, noticing as he leaves that he's wearing his father's leather jacket.

_That boy misses his daddy, _Bobby told her once. Old bastard has always been annoyingly observant. All these years, she tried to be enough for her sons, to make up for John's absence but she understands at this instant that she has been fighting a lost battle.

She folds her arms on her chest, huddles on herself and lets the tears flow. Then after a few minutes, she wipes them resolutely from her cheeks.


End file.
